Dream inspires art for CU professor

March 21, 2017 - David Kluth

The works below came from a dream that Prof. Kurt Bergdolt had before Christmas. Kurt is an art professor at CU and specializes in ceramics. In his dream he received a brightly wrapped package in red and green with a tag that read, “Merry Christmas from Kim Jong Un.” When he “opened” the package in his dream, he found a nuclear core inside. The pieces of the art Kurt created indirectly relate to this dream.

Inside the room where his works were displayed, he bricked up the doors using soft firebrick from an old kiln. He took OSB from the kiln area and used it to board up the windows. The ideas generated by this environment move from the process of the kiln to bomb shelter and reinforce the idea of the futility of making utilitarian work in this time period.

Instead of completely rejecting functional work, Kurt used it as a generative practice. Through the repetitive daily motions of making simple bowls and cups, he could form ideas about his future work. The forms, inspired by 17th century Korean tea cups, fuel the bricks, at times directly as they are placed in cardboard clay boxes while they are still soft.